The New (and Unimproved) KIRO

Several e-mailers have privately requested that I comment on the ongoing staged relocation--relegation is a more apt word--of heritage newstalker KIRO/Seattle to the FM band.

Specifically, how I see the long-term implications of the surrender of that sterling 50,000-watt amplitude-modulated signal at 710 kHz, with wide regional coverage that is impossible to attain via FM technology. Whose amazing reach, not incidentally, allowed my overnight broadcasts on KIRO to be heard as far north as southern Alaska and as far south as northern California.

I'm flattered anyone is interested in my views on this historic--if profoundly ill-advised--move. But I'm also mindful that unloading my thoughts in detail regarding the decisions that led to this will be cynically misperceived as just so much sour grapes about the Mormon management team that cancelled my show--and likely my career--earlier this year.

Not to mention the ugly fact that any discussion of the matter herein might well be immediately lampooned in a certain mean-spirited and puerile local blog where ideology counts for everything and broadcast professionalism is always discounted and often even disdained.

So I'm reluctant to publish exactly how the new KIRO, a development that has been in the works for some time now, strikes me. But I bet you can accurately imagine what I--and surely most other old-school radio newstalkers--think of it.

BRYAN STYBLE/somewhere